....I should be doin' laundry, or dishes, or cleaning, or cooking, or sewing, or teaching the children or reading the Bible, or any number of other things. I always have these grand ideas and plans, yet somehow, someway, I always end up doing what I shouldn't.

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Sunday, April 10, 2011

Kings and Queens of England Lapbook

Four years ago while studying these years in history (The Middle Ages, The Renaissance, and The Reformation), I wanted to make a lapbook for the Kings and Queens of England. I had come across this neat site with nice pictures of all the kings and queens. Hannah, Ellie, and I thought and thought and thought but never came up with any good ideas. Fast forward to this year when we're back in the same time period once again. In my binder with the outline for this year, I had those printed pages of the kings and queens of England staring at me, crying out to be put together into something useful. Fortunately for me, I now know someone who is very creative and together we came up with a very neat idea.

The front cover of the lapbook

Mindy is talented at using Photoshop and her Wish Blade. I'm talented at coming up with crazy ideas, throwing them at her and watching her create wonderful things with them. This project wasn't much different.

First she made castle shapes on Photoshop and then cut them out along with the name of each house with her Wish Blade. I, in the meantime, found on the Internet the various symbols for the houses. Mindy sized these in Photoshop to fit on the center of the castle and then we printed them in color onto cardstock. I also had found a neat poem that would help memorize all the kings and queens of England in order. But this poem started with William the Conqueror and I had figures for the Saxons and Danes who had come before.

Hannah to the rescue! She wrote poems to cover those kings in those two houses and I typed them all into a document, sized them, and printed them to add to the lapbook. Now we had all the parts so we began assembly! Here is how it looks.

The front flap opens to the right. The inside of the front flap has the entire King and Queen of England poem printed. On the left begins the individual houses which are glued to card stock (two houses per sheet).

Carefully grab hold of the lower left corner of the houses' page:

and stretch out the accordion fold to reveal all ten houses:

Isn't that cool?

With each of the ten houses, you can pull down the front castle to reveal a timeline with figures.

Name that King!

The timeline is also accordion folded in order to stretch out to the right to reveal the length of time that house ruled England.

On each of these individual time lines (made with card stock) we used a pen to draw a timeline on the bottom of the page. We then used strips of colored paper taped above to show the length of the individual king's reign. Then we took the figures which had been printed in color and glued them first onto a folded card stock strip (6in x 2in and when folded it is 3in x 2in), then onto the proper spot on the timeline.

As we learn about the kings, we can fold them down and right about them underneath.

Finally, on the inside of the castle, with the folded front open, and the timeline stretched to the right, I added the portion of the poem for that house.

Here is the entire poem. We are slowly learning it.

Another great thing about this project is that as we continue reading Our Island Story, our poem helps us (read me) remember who we're reading about. I'm under no illusion that we'll be experts on the Kings and Queens after this. But I am happy that this is one more thing aid our learning.

in fact this makes me wonder if I have the passion to raise children that will want to learn and work as hard as this! I was raised in public school, as was my husband, and I have to say I didn't have to work very hard to get straight A's...I pretty much avoided work wherever I could...this homeschooling journey is daunting!

Oh Melrose don't despair! Your children will surprise you with all their interests and knowledge, just like mine have. I've learned along with them, but they surpass me in knowledge and understanding in a multiple of areas, and they still love me. I could never have done this project at the beginning of our journey, but in the ninth year, it was less daunting, and yes, even fun.

Yes, this is very much what I had in mind to help with this subject. Do you have more detailed plans or do you have the lapbook images for sale somewhere? I can print out the images of the kings and queens, however, it might prove rather difficult to find all of the heralds of the houses in one place, size and style, as you have them.

Hi Heather, No I'm sorry, I do not have more detailed plans. I will think about maybe doing just that for others to use. The earliest I would be able to complete such a project is summertime though. If I do decide to tackle this, I will post to my blog and let you know. Thanks!

This is a wonderful lapbook, my children are now old enough to go into this depth in learning. I just have a question. Where did you find the pictures of the Kings and Queens? I like the look and coloring of them but have looked all over the internet and can't find anything close. Were they part of a book or internet search? I know you made this a few years back.

Thank you for your comment. I still love this lap book and am still using it with the three still at home. I found the pictures of the Kings and Queens using an internet search. I linked to the site in the first paragraph, it still worked when I clicked on it. Good luck on putting together your lap book!

About Me

I am the wife of a confessional, LCMS pastor and the mother of 5 children. I keep busy with homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, and making my hubby happy. I don't do all of them well all of the time, but I do some of them well some of the time.